Tampa Bay Rays

Joy R. Absalon-USA TODAY Sports Sorry, David Price. They say that the game is about what you’ve done lately, and what you’ve done lately isn’t all that remarkable. It doesn’t help that the Tampa Bay Rays‘ ace is shelved on the DL with a triceps injury, but it helps his status even less that he’s been consistently outperformed by the sophomore on the block in Matt Moore, who is quickly ascending the team’s depth charts to the point where it wouldn’t be too difficult to make a case for him to be the team’s new No. 1 already. After all, how can you deny the 2.29/1.09 ERA/WHIP that the 23-year-old owns, on top of an AL-leading .197 BAA? The lefty’s dominance continued against the divisional rival Baltimore Orioles on Sunday, as he delivered yet another quality start (six of nine in 2013), throwing seven strong innings while allowing just one run on five hits, one walk, and striking out three batters. Though he didn’t end up making everyone look silly, there was little question that Moore was in control. Only a leadoff triple from Manny Machado (who later scored) gave him his only legitimate trouble inning of the outing, and he came out it relatively unscathed by retiring his next three batters. In all, it was enough to earn him his eighth victory of the season, and if you happen to like wins and losses as an evaluator, you’ll probably enjoy the fact that the win on Sunday gave Moore a franchise record ninth consecutive win in a row dating back to last year … a record set by — yes, you guessed it — David Price. While being compared to Babe Ruth certainly isn’t going to hurt a player’s stock, the more pertinent question to ask of Moore is if this run of dominance is going to last. And the short answer is no … well, not like this, anyway. Although the lefty has been very good in most of his outings, the ones that didn’t quite fit in that category were ones what he was lucky not to have lost. It’s also no coincidence that those starts happened to be the ones where his penchant for giving out free passes was at its worst (six walks on April 10, consecutive four-walk outings to start May). No matter how great his pure stuff might be, the 4.25 BB/9 and a 1.15 HR/9 rate is eventually going to come back to bite Moore, simply because he’s riding on a fairly ridiculous 91.8 percent strand rate right now. There’s little doubt that the youngster’s stuff is excellent, but the short of it is that he’s not throwing a lot of strikes (46 percent), batters are making more contact (78.7 percent vs. 74.5 in 2012), and they aren’t coming in the way of ground balls (0.77 GB/FB, 0.87 in 2012). Yes, many of them are pop-ups (12.3 percent) and most are not hard-hit (17.3 line drive rate), both contributing to his .197 BABIP, but that’s not going to stay almost 100 points below the .293 he posted last year, not the the whole season. That’s not to say that Moore can’t continue succeeding, of course. But if he wants to maintain the numbers he’s had all year, adjustments with his control are going to have to be made, lest he wants the rest of his season to be a off-again, on-again high-wire act.

Since the Rays last saw the Blue Jays, Toronto has gone 4-7, taking two from Boston and clobbering two games against the Giants. The Jays scored 36 runs over those four wins before returning to their anemic ways for two games in New York. The Rays have posted seven wins in the same time frame, including two more games than Toronto has played, and the team is riding a 9-11 win streak dating back to May 8th and 9th against the Jays. A rainout of Game 3 spared Toronto from a sweep and has pushed R.A. Dickey into today's starting role at Rogers Centre. It's been a tough road for Tampa Bay; they are facing AL East opponents in 16-of-19 consecutive games this month, which began with a roller-coaster defeat at the hands of the Jays on Monday, May 6th. Yet after a sweep of Baltimore in Camden Yards, the Rays are riding a wave of energy flying into Canada for this three-game series. The Rays play an interesting set of times this week: today at 1:07 thanks to a regional holiday (Victoria Day!), a normal slot Tuesday at 7:07, and an early start Wednesday at 4:37. The Rays will then have a day to fly home before facing the Yankees in two-of-three day games as well - including a 4:10 start on Saturday, and the usual 1:40 for Sunday. But that's later - here's to hoping the Rays can keep their offense together during the awkward sleep schedules. Per Fox Sports, the Blue Jays are 12th in the American League in runs per game, next-to-last in rotation ERA (ahead of the Astros), and 10th in bullpen ERA. R.A. Dickey v Jake Odorizzi Out of routine this week, Jake Odorizzi gets the nod in David Price's stead after a strained triceps and a bout with many allergies landed our Cy Young on the disabled list. The Odor faces R.A. Dickey, who has yet to succumb to back and neck injuries, but has suffered a 3-5 record, 4.83 ERA, and 4.81 FIP in nine games. Dickey's biggest problem mirrors what Price was facing, with a different twist: lost velocity. Dickey isn't known for spitting fire like Price, but he does have two knuckleballs to his name. He calls them "fast" and "slow" knuckleballs, and the "fast" one has lost its edge. Two MPH, in fact. Here's the heavy lifting Eno Sarris already put together on Dickey's velocity on the knuckler over his career: via fangraphs.com Because speed does not affect trajectory for the knuckleball, Dickey is still generating swings and misses with an impressive 10.2% whiffs, but he's having issues finding the strike zone as often, and losing nearly five points on his Zone percentage (46.8% in 2013). If I may make a connection, a lack of speed seems to have led to more wary control - which is funny, considering Dickey has become one of the fastest working pitchers in baseball. This wouldn't be such a problem if Dickey was still getting batters to swing outside the zone at last year's rates. After earning 34.5% swings with the Knuckle outside in 2012, that rate has fallen to 24.5% at a quarter of the way through the season. Making matters a bit worse, Dickey's O-contact% is up 5% on the knuckle as well. In other words, not as many batters are afraid to go after the butterfly-pitch as they were last year, and this too could be a direct result of lost velocity. A split second longer to watch the ball float is enough to take a pitcher from Cy Young to Ricky Romero in no time at all. Still, this is R.A. Dickey. In his most recent start Dickey struck out ten San Francisco Giants, going 6.0 innings over 115 pitches. He earned 15 whiffs on the knuckle, threw 62% for strikes, and touched 79 MPH, so the Cy may still be lurking. Against Tampa Bay, that extra day of rest from yesterday's rainout in New York may come in handy. Ramon Ortiz v Alex Cobb Old man Ortiz will take the mound for Toronto in Game 2. The 39 year old Dominican has played three games this season, starting two and posting four strikeouts in that time. He pitched for the Tampa Yankees last season, never breaking out of Triple-A and featuring a 3.45 ERA

Alex Colome was named International League Pitcher of the Week. Good for him.Nice write up:Right-hander Alex Colome picked up two victories for the Durham Bulls this week and led the International League with 19 strikeouts. Last Monday against Lehigh Valley, Colome erased a personal five-game losing streak with arguably his best outing of 2013. He recorded season-highs with 7.0 innings pitched and eleven strikeouts as the Bulls coasted to an 8-2 triumph. Colome returned to the mound Saturday and defeated the 1st place Norfolk Tides behind 6.0 innings of two-run baseball. The win improved Colome's record on the season to 3-5, and he now leads the League with 59 strikeouts.24-year-old Alex Colome is in his seventh professional season and first full year at the Triple-A level. In 2012 he was named Most Valuable Player of his Double-A Montgomery team, going 8-3 andposting a 3.48 ERA. Colome is a native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Game 44, May 19, DBAP1234567RHENorfolk Tides (Orioles)0100011392Durham Bulls (Rays)0000011241Season: 26-18; Home Stand: 1-1Wrap, Box, Herald-SunIt says a lot about the Norfolk Tides’ pitcher, Zack Britton, that of the 24 Bulls he faced only one hit a fly ball, an out to left field. All the rest were ground balls, just four singles, two into double plays. He had a great night.Nevertheless, before the deluge things weren’t looking too bad. Britton was not nearly as sharp as the 7th inning opened. The Bulls had scored a run and had runners on first and third with nobody out. Tim Beckham was at the plate with, I think, a 2-2 count. But it really started raining buckets. I left. According to the Herald-Sun the umps waited 2½ hours to make the call. Bulls pitcher, J.D. Martin, actually had a pretty good night. His only real mistake was a home run to Tides’ first baseman Travis Ishikawa. Martin throws strikes and, mostly, gets Ks and lets the defense get the rest. They usually do that this year. He got a lot of help with terrific plays by Jason Bourgeois and Craig Albernaz who punished runners for trying to stretch singles into doubles. Otherwise the 7th inning would have more than just the one unearned run by the Tides. The Bulls are a match for the them, it seems to me. We’ll have to see how this season plays out.Outside the game — Shelley Duncan left a game up in Rochester on May 17 and hasn’t played since. Does anyone know what I’ve missed?Alex Torres is coming back. Jake Odorizzi will be starting a game against the Blue Jays. The Bulls are still short one pitcher.

Tampa Rays fans can head to Tampa Lee Roy Selmon’s locations and get on board a chauffeured luxury bus to Tropicana Field. It’s only $9.95 roundtrip!!! The hated Yankees are in town Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This is a stunning deal! Why waste money on parking and gas, especially when you can ride in style with an adult beverage in hand on a Paradise Worldwide Transportation luxury bus? Click on through below to learn more about the best deal in Tampa Bay sports, the No Excuses Tour to Tropicana Field. Find out how nearly 1,000 fans have enjoyed Rays games since 2011. © The Professor for Rays Index, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:

Blue Jays’ mistakes exposing them View full post on Yahoo! Sports – MLB – Tampa Bay Rays News

This afternoon, Jake Odorizzi, one of the returns from the James Shields trade, will get his first start in a Rays uniform. Back when the trade was made, Michael gave an introduction and there are plenty of scouting reports from his time in the minors. But we don't have to rely on the scouting reports alone. Odorizzi got a cup of coffee last year with Kansas City, and that means that we have PITCHf/x data. He came in as a reliever in two games, and started two others, pitching seven and a third innings. It's not enough to draw any conclusions about Odor's tendencies or abilities, but it's plenty to get a sense of what he throws. That's a fairly standard fastball, changeup, slider, and curve repertoire, but there are a few points of interest. The first is Odorizzi's fastball, which averages in the low 90s and can reach 95 mph. It's the fastball of a flyball pitcher, without much run, but with extremely impressive rise. For some context, here are the career average four-seam fastballs (using Brooks Baseball classifications) for all of the 2013 Rays starters and James Shields. Click to enlarge. What can we learn from this graph? Matt Moore's four-seamer is crazy, Roberto Hernandez's is barely a four-seam at all, and Jake Odorizzi would have either the second best or the third worst if you were judging based only on movement in one dimension (that would be silly to do). I think that's okay. Not everyone can be Matt Moore, and I like pitchers with one extreme dimension to their pitches, rather than average all-around movement. It's possible to succeed with good command of a straight but rising fastball (that's how Joel Peralta pitches). Let's jump back to Odorizzi's PITCHf/x data from last year, and focus just on the fastball alone. I'm not going to seriously dig into classifying Odorizzi's fastballs until there's more data to look at, but I think this graph shows the beginning of a pattern. Horizontal movement doesn't appear to affect vertical movement much at all, but the faster pitches are a bit straighter. I take that to mean one of three things: 1) Nothing whatsoever. 2) Odor actually throws both a four-seam and two-seam fastballs, and as he pitches more we'll learn to differentiate them. 3) When he tries to throw hard, he loses movement. I'd be fine with choices one or two, but choice three would be something for Odor to work on. Back to Odorizzi's secondary pitches. None of these pitches are very impressive. His 84 mph changeup is fairly straight, yet neither does it precisely mirror the movement of his fastball. For success with his changeup, Odorizzi will need to rely on establishing his fastball and then selling the pitch with arm speed. Sliders are more difficult to evaluate based solely on their movement. Also at 84 mph, Odorizzi's version of the slider is closer on the spectrum to a cutter than it is to a curve, but pitchers succeed with every manner of slider. If Odorizzi can command the pitch I won't have a bad thing to say about it. In his brief major league appearance last year, he used it almost exclusively against righties. Let's get a bit of context on Odorizzi's curve. It's neither as much of a sweeper as Hellickson's nor does it have as much 12-6 drop as Cobb's. It most resembles the curve of the man he's seeking to replace in the Rays rotation, James Shields. You will remember that Shields's curve was never a great strikeout pitch, but he used it almost as a second fastball, something he could throw for strikes and work other pitches off of late in the game. Overall, this is not the repertoire of a front-line starter, but no one is expecting Odorizzi to be one right now. All he needs to do is compete, and let the juggernaut that is the Tampa Bay offense do the rest of the work.

Rays fans can associate with the feeling. The more games that passed, the more it seemed that the pessimists were right and that the Rays were finally going to have that disastrous season cynics have been waiting for. Eight wins in their last ten games, though, has changed a lot. In the eyes of David Shoenfeld, the Rays are back to being a favorite in the AL East. Moore has held batters to a .175 average but he has also walked 26 in 55 innings, so there's room for improvement. In some ways, that's what made Sunday's outing impressive: He struck out only three but walked one, avoiding a big inning in the process. Another area for improvement is that while Moore's fastball/curveball/changeup arsenal has destroyed right-handers -- they're hitting .064 off the curveball with 20 strikeouts in 47 plate appearances -- he hasn't yet learned to dominate lefties, who have hit a respectable .236/.335/.361 off him the past two seasons he sticks mostly to the fastball against them. Of course, a major reason he's 8-0 is excellent run support, but this isn't a typical Tampa Bay offense that struggles to put up runs. After outscoring only the Royals, Indians and Mariners last season, the Rays have scored just 12 runs fewer than the best-in-the-AL Tigers. The Rays' OPS has increased from .711 to .760 and not just because Dodgers castoff James Loney is off to a .356 start. Matt Joyce has eight home runs and Luke Scott has driven in 12 runs in 17 games since coming off the DL; both homered in Sunday's win. Kelly Johnson is hitting .274 with seven home runs. .... But here's why I'll stick with my preseason choice of the Rays to win the AL East: pitching, pitching, pitching. At least starting pitching. (The bullpen is the team's major issue right now.) At Triple-A Durham, the rotation included Alex Torres (2.39 ERA, 49 SO, 14 BB in 37.2 IP), Jake Odorizzi (3.83 ERA, 47 SO, 15 BB in 44.2 IP), Chris Archer (4.38 ERA, 40 SO, 19 BB in 39 IP) and Alex Colome (2.86 ERA, 59 SO, 20 BB in 50 IP). The Angels would kill to have those four in their rotation right now. On Sunday, Matt Moore was great again on his way to his 8th win as the Rays beat the Orioles 3-1 to finish off a sweep. His 8-0 start is something special–he became the first lefty 23 years old or younger to begin the season 8-0 since some guy named Babe Ruth. Ruth finished that season 24-13 and Moore will not do that. But unlike Ruth, Moore is still getting better, as Shoenfeld talked about. Moore will face regression, but his continued improvement gives him a chance to be an ace for years to come. And with Moore leading an impressive pitching staff even with David Price out, this Rays pitching staff is as dangerous as ever. Like Moore's luck regression being canceled out by his development as a pitcher, the offense will likely lose a step but the improvement of the pitching staff should cancel out the difference. Anything can happen and the Rays' critics may be right. But this team still has as much potential as ever and it's certainly not time to give up yet. Here are your links for today: -Ben Lindbergh talked to catching coordinators about pitch framing. -Jeff Beliveau discussed being in the big leagues for a day. He hoped he would "stick a little longer." Sorry. -Scott Kazmir goes for the Indians at 12:05 today. -With the Rays' overabundance of starting pitching and bullpen struggles, ever thought of the Rays maybe using multiple starters per game to minimize the use of their bullpen? Russell Carleton wrote about the feasibility of that idea.

The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe. RAYS 3, Orioles 1 (boxscore) THE GOOD: Matt Moore. Sunday was perfect, albeit odd, Matt Moore. His fastball was only 92-93 most of the day. But it was still dominant and he still had a solid 8 swing-and-misses. And yet he only had 3 strikeouts. The upside was that he worked 7 full innings. And that is all the Rays need from Moore: 7+1+1. That is, 7 from Moore, 1 from Joel Peralta and 1 from Fernando Rodney. Game over, turn the lights out…Luke Scott. Luke Scott wont play 162 games. But if he did, he’d be on pace to hit .298 with 29 HRs and 114 RBI. His bat has never been in doubt. Just his ability to stay in the lineup. THE BAD: Fox National Broadcast. I like Dick Stockton. But it is hard to be a part-time play-by-play guy in baseball. It is one sport that you need to be committed to everyday if you are going to do it. And if you watched Saturday’s national broadcast of the Rays games you saw why. I’m sure you guys will come up with other examples. But the clearest example came in the 9th inning when Sam Fuld made a nice running catch. Stockton kept calling him Kelly Johnson, not realizing Fuld had come in to the game that inning. OK, Stockton missed the substitution. But the camera was zoomed in on Fuld for several seconds and Stockton kept referring to him as Johnson until Brian Anderson corrected him. Brutal. THE TELLING: Jake Odorizzi will make his first start for the Rays this afternoon…The Yankees traded for Reid Brignac, who was DFA’d by the Rockies last week…The Rays were 3-12 before Sunday in games in which they scored less than 4 runs…Jeremy Hellickson was the first pitcher since 2007 (Andy Pettitte) to give up 8 earned runs and win the game…Rays are now 23-20, tied with the Orioles for third place, 4 games behind the Yankees and just a half-game behind the Red Sox… THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA… A scout recently told Peter Gammons that the Durham Bulls rotation is the “best AAA rotations he’s seen.” [Twitter] Mark Topkin takes a look at the Rays’ history of reclamation projects with James Loney as the latest. [TampaBay.com] The 8 Richest People In Baseball. [BI Sports] is Mike Glennon a legit candidate to start for the Bucs this season? Maybe. Maybe not. [JoeBucsFan] DOWN ON THE FARM… Norfolk 3, DURHAM 2. JD Martin struck out 7 and walked 1 in 7 innings, giving up 3 runs (2 earned) on 9 hits…Wil Myers went 1-2 with a walk and no strikeouts…Tim Beckham committed his 10th error. MONTGOMERY 3, Huntsville 0. Merrill Kelly went 6.2 innings without allowing a run. He struck out 5 and walked 2…Mikie Mahtook went 1-4. He’s hitting .238. CHARLOTTE 2, Fort Myers 0. Felipe Rivero toseed 5.2 shutout innings. He struck out 4 and walked 3…Richie Shaffer was 2-4 with 2 strikeouts. He’s hitting .254. BOWLING GREEN 8, West Michigan 0. Taylor Guerrieri tossed a career-high 6 innings, giving up just 1 hit, 1 walk, and no runs. He struck out 3…Andrew Toles stole his 22nd base. West Michigan 5, BOWLING GREEN 1. Andrew Toles went 2-8 in the double-header. He’s now hitting .319. © The Professor for Rays Index, 2013. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: The Hangover

We’ve got the highlights you won’t see on SportsCenter… Luke Scott fulfills his high school yearbook prophecy of 'Most likely to be only major league with a rat tail' ◄ Back Next ► Picture 1 of 25 © The Professor for Rays Index, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: